Time To Think About How Short Human History Is

Here is your daily reminder that humans are just one animal among many that have existed on Earth, and that our species’ history is minute compared to the history of the rest of our planet. In a video posted to the Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell YouTube channel called “What Happened Before History? Human Origins,” a dulcet-toned narrator recounts our relatively brief history, starting with our ancestors, the apes, and moving forward into the Internet age millions of years later.

It seems like a long time, at least compared to our short lifespans, but as the narrator points out, the history of homo sapiens sapiens (or modern humans), only makes up about 0.001 percent of all human history, including now extinct species such as homo erectus.

In other terms, it’s been about 125,000 generations since the emergence of the first human species.